look at the kind of people who want to be the leaders of their party in congress, it's not a gerald ford of the old days, someone who could make deals with the other side and is friendly with people from the other party. it's someone who can be the most intense partisan leader. that's also different. and you'd think that this all came from there being issue differences like over the bank of the united states with andrew jackson or the runup to world war two, stay out or go in. franklin park zoo, 1940, nothing remotely close to that in terms of magnitude yet the intensity of the conflict is perhaps greater than most times in history. >> woodruff: yet if you were to sit a partisan republican and a partisan democrat the down here at this desk they would say "we have very different views on taxes, on the role of government." >> i would say they certainly do. but you look out in the historical context, does that rise to the intensity of the conflict over slavery, for instance, in 1860? i don't think so. >> woodruff: mark hetherington, how do you see that? >> maybe so, but hopefully we've come